Promoting strong public schools for Providence\’s East Side and beyond

Superintendent Evans to Resign

Update: This (Tuesday) morning, the ProJo has a longer version of the story that was posted last night. It no longer mentions Nathan Bishop.

As was reported on the 11:00 news tonight, and in the Providence Journal on-line, Dr. Donnie Evans, Superintendent of Providence Schools, has submitted his resignation, effective at the expiration of his contract on September 19th, to the Providence School Board. Dr. Evans’ letter can be read here.

I would like to comment on one part of the ProJo story on Evans’ resignation. The story cites “the furor over the fate of the Nathan Bishop Middle School” as one of the problems of Dr. Evans’ administration. While it is certainly fair to say that ESPEC was unhappy about the decision to close Bishop- in fact, the closing was what brought us into being- it is also true that, over the following two years we have worked closely with Dr. Evans and found him to be interested, engaged, and extremely helpful to our efforts to restore public education at Bishop. He formed the Bishop Committee and invited community stake-holders (including myself and several other members of the ESPEC steering committee) to serve on it. He has been supportive of our efforts to bring public middle school education back to the East Side of Providence. For that, at least, we owe him a debt of gratitude.